More threats close Minnesota, Iowa high schools

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More threats at schools across Minnesota. WCCO has a roundup: “A school in northern Minnesota and another just over the Minnesota-Iowa border have closed due to threats Thursday. … Overnight, Hill City School announced classes will be canceled Thursday. … ‘Threats have been sent through social media directed at some Hill City students,’ the school said. … Hill City School says law enforcement is aware and is investigation.” Meanwhile, from Olivia, the West Central Tribune adds: “The BOLD School District is notifying district residents, students and staff that there was no threat to safety despite stories circulating that someone intended to bring a gun to school Tuesday.”

City Pages’ Jacob Steinberg photographed and spoke withsome of the high schoolers protesting gun-violence in Minneapolis Wednesday: “About 150 students from South High School, led by Isra Hirsi, daughter of State Rep. Ilhan Omar, rendezvoused with students from Roosevelt High School at City Hall. They were eventually joined by students from Southwest and Washburn High Schools, who trudged five long miles through snow and ice from South Minneapolis, picking up Mayor Jacob Frey as they passed through Phillips. … Speaking to the cheering crowd outside City Hall, Frey promised to propose a statewide assault weapons ban at the next Intergovernmental Relations committee meeting.”

Not the kind of trend you want to see. MPR’s Mark Zdechlik reports: “Minnesota health officials say the number of cases of seriously flawed medical care in hospitals and surgery centers has been rising over the last four years. These errors are referred to ‘adverse events’ and state officials say they should occur rarely at most. … Care providers reported 341 ‘adverse events’ from October 2016 through September 2017. They included 12 deaths and more than 100 serious injuries. Two-thirds did not lead to death or serious injury. Still, Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm declared the findings a problem.”

Clean-water focus. The Forum News Service’s Don Davis reports in the PiPress: “A couple of businesses are moving to Windom, a 4,600-population community in southwest Minnesota, but the mayor there worries that the city cannot handle much more growth. … The limiting factor may be the city’s need for a new sewage treatment plant to meet state and federal guidelines. Mayor Dominic Jones, who in his private life is director of the Red Rock Rural Water District, said the mandated sewage plant would cost $15 million if it could be built now, but the city cannot afford it. … Even if Windom receives $7 million from the state, as Gov. Mark Dayton proposed in his $1.5 billion public works funding bill, the remaining $8 million would be a heavy lift for the city, the mayor said. … It is a story common among cities across the state, especially small ones in greater Minnesota. The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities says clean water projects are at the top of its priority list.”

California has had an assault rifle ban since 1989. It has been amended several times, and has been challenged in the courts, but as of today, it is still good law.

The District of Columbia v. Heller case to which you refer specifically distinguished handguns (which were at issue in the case) from assault rifles. That was the point of the “in common use” language. Nothing in that decision impacts the California assault rifle ban.

As a lawyer and a smart guy, I expect that Frey knew (or at least familiarized himself) with what the law actually says. But whatever he actually knew, he was not engaging in specious rhetoric, but was speaking with complete accuracy about the law.